Education

---

Courses Taught

---

Teaching Experience

---

Research Interests

Geographic variation in avian life history traits and parental care behaviors

Life history traits, such as clutch size, renesting rates, developmental rates, age of first reproduction, and adult survival, along with parental care behaviors (incubation, brooding, feeding young), vary extensively in geographic space. This project focuses on measuring these traits and behaviors for coexisting species across a series of geographic sites that differ in adult and nest mortalities (Arizona (current), Malaysia (current), Venezuela (done), South Africa (done), New Zealand (done), Tasmania (done)).

Climate effects on a high elevation riparian ecosystem and bird community

A long-term (since 1985) study of a high elevation riparian ecosystem and bird community demonstrates climate effects on trophic interactions among plants, birds, and nest predation. Key deciduous plants and several bird species have declined strongly in abundance, with one previously common bird species (MacGillivray's Warbler) even going locally extinct. Large herbivores may interact with climate change to cause plant losses (see next project).

Large herbivore exclusion experiment on a riparian ecosystem

Long-term declines in plants, and many bird species that rely on these plants, may reflects of over-browsing by large herbivores, together with climate change (see above project). Herbivory and climate may interact in that drier years may yield lower plant propogation that make them more susceptible to browsing pressures. Large-scale (9 ha) exclosures were erected on three sites in 2004 to examine the separate effects of herbivores versus climate.

Martin, T. E. and J. V. Briskie. 2009. Predation on dependent offspring: a review of the consequences for mean expression and phenotypic plasticity in avian life history traits. The Year in Evolutionary Biology 2009: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1168: 201-217.